Am Sonntag frass der kleine Oli-Nimmersatt:

• 2 Scheiben Brot
• 3 Nektarinen
• 1 Teller Erbsen mit Reis
• 1 Teller Chinagemüse
• 1 Flasche Milch
• 2 Flaschen Apfelsaft
• 2 Zimtschnecken
• 1 Scheibe Brot
• 1 Halbes Vanilleeis

Joel West writes:

IBM is spending $1.2b to buy Chicago-based SPSS, one of the three major statistics and data mining software companies.

He has more thoughts about this on his post, so I defer to that.

Wow, Big Blue is getting scary. Now I have to stop using Yahoo, as well as continuing to stay away from SPSS :).

Gestern eine Absage für einen eingereichten Artikel bekommen :-(. Als kulinarisches Trostpflaster haben Stefan Häfliger und ich uns ein Eis bei Sorbetto gegönnt. Es ist das Beste in Zürich!

Übrigens, Lavendelglacé schmeckt interessant, aber erstaunlich gut :-).
UPDATE 2009-07-30: Grünteeeis ist ein sehr gewöhnungsbedürfiger Geschmack, etwas grasig. Nicht unser Lieblingseis.

Wir haben letzte Woche in Bellefontaine Urlaub gemacht. Es ist in einer ziemlich ländlichen Region zwischen Lothringen und dem Elsass. Zusammen mit Daniel Zentgraf, Cristina Gonzalez & Maite, sowie mit Almuts Schwester Theresa haben uns ein nettes Häuschen gemietet und die Zeit genossen. Bücher lesen, im Sandkasten spielen, spazierengehen, sowie die Städte in der Umgebung erkunden…

Wir waren so faul, dass nicht einmal eines der vielen Spiele die wir mitgenommen hatten gebraucht haben! Geschweige denn meine Unibücher angeschaut.

Mehr Bilder sind hier.

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Joel West takes note of an incredible act by Amazon, who are deleting legally bought ebooks of privately owned Kindle Ebook readers. I just need to quote the original blog post by Lauren Weinstein:

In a turn of events so ironic that even the seediest Hollywood porn producer would have rejected the plot as ridiculously unrealistic, Amazon.com has demonstrated that the worlds of electronic vs. paper books are universes apart, and in one fell swoop magnified the worst fears of e-book detractors around the world.

The script sounds so ridiculous that it’s almost embarrassing to recount. To retroactively satisfy a demand from one of their suppliers, Amazon reportedly reached electronically into privately-owned Kindle electronic book readers and deleted recently purchased copies of — get this — 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell.

The irony drips so thickly that it practically coagulates on spinning disk drives. Just as 1984’s Winston Smith’s role was to delete and change unacceptable points of history from information databases, Amazon — without any warning and without asking for permission from Kindle owners — destroyed e-books that had been legally purchased, replacing them with a purchase credit.

I have written a short piece that I submitted to Fibonacci, an Indian Open Source Magazine about the differing philosophies of what is “free” for several FOSS camps, especially about the BSD vs GNU divide.

UPDATE: The open source magazine Fibonacci has now released its inauggural issue, and my small piece can be found on page 68 of the pdf.

Thanks to Matthias Stuermer http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.ca/ film

Mein Bruder ist in China und hat ein Weblog.

Returning from Padova I had to change trains in Milano. Unfortunately 15 minutes for changing trains does not seem enough in Italy, my train was 25 minutes delayed (that makes 3 out of my total 3 trains being late) and I missed the connection.

Unfortunately there are no signs at all to a customer service counter, so I go to a ticket machine to get the next connection to Zurich: “Can not show times for Zurich, please go to a counter”. There are 20 Counters, but only 3 of them are open and about 50 persons waiting. I queue for half an hour. The clerk is friendly but has bad news: “Oh that was the last connection, you won’t make it to Zurich today. How about going to Lugano or Bellinzona today, would that help you?”

I don’t care, I have to stay overnight anyway, wherever that is. I ask whether Trenitalia pays a hotel, he tells me to go to the customer service counter on ground floor. I search “customer service” and eventually find it: a small glass box in a corner of the train station with no sign pointing to it.

What a customer service: I show my ticket, trying to explain the situation as quickly as possible. She looks on my ticket, sees the next connection Lugano and tells me to just use the next train to Lugano in 10 minutes, already turning to the next person. She does so in a VERY brief and unfriendly way. I run towards the train, which is a Night Train and extremly overcrowded as it only has one car with seats. It’s also extremly hot in there. I phone Almut: I would be stuck in Lugano for the night and she has checked out hotels meanwhile. Lugano is much more expensive, and she found a good hotel next to the main station in Milano.

So, now I ended up in a hotel in Milano which I will have to pay on my own and still don’t really know when I will get home. My next train departs 10 minutes after my hotel offers breakfast, so I won’t even be able to have that.
Thanks to Almut for remotely recharging my phone, being my internet researcher and information desk and bearing with my annoyedness. Not thanks to Trenitalia whose service did not impress me greatly. I am now in the Facebook group “Odio Trenitalia” (I hate Trenitalia).

UPDATE 2009-07-08: The journey continued on the next day. My train from Milano was again 20 mintes late, and I missed my connection in Lugano. To cut a long story short, the whole trip took me 19 hours.

P.S. Hey Google search, read this: Trenitalia sucks.

viamala (c)spaetz, CC-BY

Da Almut an Olivers Geburtstag krank war, haben wir ihn letztes Wochenende einfach nachgeholt. Wir sind nach Graubünden gefahren und haben das Wochenende dort verbracht. Mit einem Abstecher im Schwimmbad in Chur (empfehlenswert), haben wir uns dann die berühmte Viamala-schlucht angeschaut. Die Wettergötter meinten es gut mit uns und haben uns trotz gemischtem Wetter immer dann mit Sonnenschein belohnt wenn wir ihn brauchten.

Nach einem Dorfbummel in Andeer mit Kafi und Schoggi (und einer Rutsche im Garten!) ging es dann hinauf zu unserem Hotel in Wergenstein wo wir den abend genossen, d.h. Oliver tobte wild im Bett herum und warf sich in die Kissenhaufen während wir gegen 20 gerne eingeschlafen wären…

Am nächsten Tag ein kleiner Spaziergang in Wergenstein… und… KÜHE! Wie spannend, Oliver war kaum noch zu bändigen und hüpfte in seinem Tragrucksack wie ein wilder auf und ab und zeigte auf die Kühe. Spannend. Seeehr spannend.
Auf dem Rückweg ein kleiner Zwischenstopp am Walensee um die Batterien mit Knäckebrot und Scheibletten wieder auf zu tanken und ein paar Steinchen in den See (und den Mund) zu schmeissen. Ein aufregendes und erlebnisreiches Geburtstags-nachhol-Wochenende.

KÜHE! …vor Wolkenbergen (c)spaetz, CC-BY-ND